Everything is in a ceaseless flux, says Heraclitus; there is no permanent
being; all is change and becoming.

It must be left to metaphysical speculation to deal with the problems whether
this proposition can be borne out from the point of view of a superhuman
intelligence and furthermore whether it is possible for a human mind to think
of change without implying the concept of a substratum that, while it changes,
remains in some regard and sense constant in the succession of its various
states.

For epistemology, the theory of human knowledge, there is certainly something
that it cannot help considering as permanent, viz., the logical and
praxeological structure of the human mind, on the one hand, and the power of
the human senses, on the other hand.
Fully aware of the fact that human nature as it is in this epoch of cosmic
changes in which we are living is neither something that existed from the very
beginning of all things nor something that will remain forever, epistemology
must look upon it as if it were unchanging.
The natural sciences may try to go further and to study the problems of
evolution.

But epistemology is a branch—or rather, the basis—of the sciences of man. It
deals with one aspect of the nature of man as he emerged from the aeons of
cosmic becoming and as he is in this [1] period of the history of the
universe.

It does not deal with thinking, perceiving and knowing in general, but with
human thinking, perceiving and knowing. For epistemology there is something
that it must take as unchanging, viz., the logical and praxeological structure
of the human mind.

One must not confuse knowledge with mysticism. The mystic may say that "shadow
and sunlight are the same."Knowledge starts from the clear distinction between A and
non-A.

We know that there were ages of cosmic history in which there did not exist
beings of the kind we call Homo sapiens, and we are free to assume that there
will be again ages in which this species will not exist.
But it is vain for us to speculate about the conditions of beings that are, in
the logical and praxeological structure of their minds and in the power of
their senses, essentially different from man as we know him and as we are
ourselves. Nietzsche's concept of a superman is devoid of any
epistemological meaning.

2. On Action

Epistemology deals with the mental phenomena of human life, with man as he
thinks and acts.
The main deficiency of traditional epistemological attempts is to be seen in
their neglect of the praxeological aspects.
The epistemologists dealt with thinking as if it were a separate field cut off
from other manifestations of human endeavor. They dealt with the problems of
logic and mathematics, but they failed to see the practical aspects of
thinking. They ignored the praxeological a priori.

The shortcomings of this approach became manifest in the teachings of natural
theology as distinguished from revealed theology.
Natural theology saw the characteristic mark of deity in freedom from the
limitations of the human mind and the human will. Deity is omniscient and
almighty.

But in elaborating these ideas the philosophers failed to see that a concept of
deity that implies an acting God, that is, a God behaving in the way man
behaves in acting, is self-contradictory.
Man acts because he is dissatisfied with the state of affairs as it prevails in
the absence of his intervention. Man acts because he lacks the power to render
conditions fully satisfactory and must resort to appropriate means in order to
render them less unsatisfactory.

But for an almighty supreme being there cannot be any dissatisfaction with the
prevailing state of affairs. The Almighty does not act, because there is no
state of affairs that he cannot render fully satisfactory without any action,
i.e., without resorting to any means. For Him there is no such thing as a
distinction between ends and means.

It is anthropomorphism to ascribe action to God. Starting from the limitations
of his human nature, man's discursive reasoning can never circumscribe and
define the essence of omnipotence.

However, it must be emphasized that what prevented people from paying attention
to the praxeological issues was not theological considerations. It was the
passionate longing for the realization of the Utopian chimera of the land of
Cockaigne.

As the science of economics, the up-to-now best elaborated part of praxeology,
exploded the fallacies of every brand of utopianism, it was outlawed and
stigmatized as unscientific.

The most characteristic trait of modern epistemology is its entire
neglect of economics, that branch of knowledge whose development
and practical application was the most spectacular event of modern
history.

3. On Economics

The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea
that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences.
The mischief done by such misconstructions cannot be avoided by admonishing the
economist to stop casting longing glances upon other fields of knowledge or
even to ignore them entirely.
Ignorance, whatever subject it may concern, is in no case a
quality that could be useful in the search for truth.
What is needed to prevent a scholar from garbling economic studies by resorting
to the methods of mathematics, physics, biology, history or jurisprudence is
not slighting and neglecting these sciences, but, on the contrary, trying to
comprehend and to master them. He who wants to achieve anything in praxeology
must be conversant with mathematics, physics, biology, history, and
jurisprudence, lest he confuse the tasks and the methods of the theory of human
action with the tasks and the methods of any of these other branches of
knowledge.

What was wrong with the various Historical Schools of economics was
first of all that their adepts were merely dilettantes in the field of
history.

No competent mathematician can fail to see through the fundamental fallacies of
all varieties of what is called mathematical economics and especially
of econometrics.

No biologist was ever fooled by the rather amateurish organicism of such
authors as Paul de Lilienfeld.

When I once expressed this opinion in a lecture, a young man in the audience
objected.
"You are asking too much of an economist," he observed; "nobody can force me to
employ my time in studying all these sciences."

My answer was:
"Nobody asks or forces you to become an economist."

4. The Starting Point of Praxeological Thinking

The a priori knowledge of praxeology is entirely different—
categorially different—from the a priori knowledge of mathematics or,
more precisely, from mathematical a priori knowledge as interpreted by
logical positivism.

The starting point of all praxeological thinking is not arbitrarily chosen
axioms, but a self-evident proposition, fully, clearly and necessarily present
in every human mind.

An unbridgeable gulf separates those animals in whose minds this cognition is
present from those in whose minds it is not fully and clearly present. Only to
the former is the appellation man accorded. The characteristic feature of man
is precisely that he consciously acts. Man is Homo agens, the acting
animal.

All—apart from zoology—that has ever been scientifically stated to distinguish
man from nonhuman mammals is implied in the proposition: man acts.To act means: to strive after ends, that is, to choose a goal and to
resort to means in order to attain the goal sought.

The essence of logical positivism is to deny the cognitive value of
a priori knowledge by pointing out that all a priori
propositions are merely analytic.
They do not provide new information, but are merely verbal or tautological,
asserting what has already been implied in the definitions and premises.
Only experience can lead to synthetic propositions.

There is an obvious objection against this doctrine, viz., that this
proposition that there are no synthetic a priori propositions is in
itself a—as the present writer thinks, false—synthetic a priori
proposition, for it can manifestly not be established by
experience.

The whole controversy is, however, meaningless when applied to praxeology. It
refers essentially to geometry.
Its present state, especially its treatment by logical positivism, has been
deeply influenced by the shock that Western philosophy received from the
discovery of non-Euclidian geometries.
Before Bolyai and Lobachevsky, geometry was, in the eyes of the
philosophers, the paragon of perfect science; it was assumed that it provided
unshakable certainty forever and for everybody.

To proceed also in other branches of knowledge more geometric was the great
ideal of truth-seekers.
All traditional epistemological concepts began to totter when the attempts to
construct non-Euclidian geometries succeeded.

Yet praxeology is not geometry.
It is the worst of all superstitions to assume that the epistemological
characteristics of one branch of knowledge must necessarily be applicable to
any other branch.
In dealing with the epistemology of the sciences of human action, one must not
take one's cue from geometry, mechanics, or any other science.

The assumptions of Euclid were once considered as selfevidently true.
Present-day epistemology looks upon them as freely chosen postulates,
the starting point of a hypothetical chain of reasoning. Whatever this may
mean, it has no reference at all to the problems of praxeology.

The starting point of praxeology is a self-evident truth, the cognition of
action, that is, the cognition of the fact that there is such a thing as
consciously aiming at ends.
There is no use cavilling about these words by referring to philosophical
problems that have no bearing upon our problem.
The truth of this cognition is as self-evident and as indispensable for the
human mind as is the distinction between A and non-A.

5. The Reality of the External World

From the praxeological point of view it is not possible to question the real
existence of matter, of physical objects and of the external world. Their
reality is revealed by the fact that man is not omnipotent.
There is in the world something that offers resistance to the realization of
his wishes and desires.
Any attempt to remove by a mere fiat what annoys him and to substitute a state
of affairs that suits him better for a state of affairs that suits him less is
vain.
If he wants to succeed, he must proceed according to methods that are adjusted
to the structure of something about which perception provides him with some
information.
We may define the external world as the totality of all those things
and events that determine the feasibility or unfeasibility, the success of
failure, of human action.

The much discussed question whether physical objects can or cannot be conceived
as existing independently of the mind is vain. For thousands of years the minds
of physicians did not perceive germs and did not divine their existence. But
the success or failure of their endeavors to preserve their patients' health
and lives depended on the way germs influenced or did not influence the
functioning of the patients' bodily organs. The germs were real because they
conditioned the outcome of events either by interfering or by not interfering,
either by being present in or by being absent from the field.

6. Causality and Teleology

Action is a category that the natural sciences do not take into account. The
scientist acts in embarking upon his research work, but in the orbit of natural
events of the external world which he explores there is no such thing as
action.
There is agitation, there is stimulus and response, and, whatever some
philosophers may object, there is cause and effect. There is what appears to be
an inexorable regularity in the concatenation and sequence of phenomena. There
are constant relations between entities that enable the scientist to establish
the process called measurement. But there is nothing that would
suggest aiming at ends sought; there is no ascertainable purpose.

The natural sciences are causality research; the sciences of human
action are teleological.

In establishing this distinction between the two fields of human knowledge, we
do not express any opinion concerning the question whether the course of all
cosmic events is or is not ultimately determined by a superhuman being's
design.
The treatment of this great problem transcends the range of man's reason and is
outside the domain of any human science. It is in the realm that metaphysics
and theology claim for themselves.

The purpose to which the sciences of human action refer is not the plans and
ways of God, but the ends sought by acting men in the pursuit of their own
designs.

The endeavors of the metaphysical discipline commonly called philosophy of
history to reveal in the flux of historical events the hidden plans of God
or of some mythical agency (as, for instance, in the scheme of Marx, the
material productive forces) are not science.

In dealing with a definite historical fact, for instance with the first World
War, the historian has to find out the ends sought by the various individuals
and groups of individuals who were instrumental in organizing these campaigns
or in fighting the aggressors.

He has to examine the outcome resulting from the actions of all people involved
and compare it with the preceding state of affairs as well as with the
intentions of the actors.

But it is not the historian's business to search after a "higher" or "deeper"
sense that manifested itself in the events or was realized by them. Perhaps
there is such a hidden "higher" or "deeper" purpose or significance in the
succession of historical events. But for mortal man there is no way open to
learn something about such "higher" or "deeper" meanings.

7. The Category of Action

All the elements of the theoretical sciences of human action are already
implied in the category of action and have to be made explicit by expounding
its contents.
As among these elements of teleology is also the category of causality, the
category of action is the fundamental category of epistemology, the starting
point of any epistemological analysis.

The very category or concept of action comprehends the concepts
of means and ends,
of preferring and putting aside, viz., of valuing,
of success and failure,
of profit and loss, of costs.

As no action could be devised and ventured upon without definite ideas about
the relation of cause and effect, teleology presupposes causality.

Animals are forced to adjust themselves to the natural conditions of their
environment; if they do not succeed in this process of adjustment, they are
wiped out. Man is the only animal that is able—within definite limits—to adjust
his environment purposively to suit him better.

We can think of the evolutionary process that transformed the nonhuman
ancestors of mankind into human beings as a succession of small, gradual
changes spread over millions of years.

But we cannot think of a mind in which the category of action would have been
present only in an incomplete form.
There is nothing in between a being driven exclusively by instincts and
physiological impulses and a being that chooses ends and the means for the
attainment of these ends.
We cannot think of an acting being that would not in concreto
distinguish what is end and what is means, what is success and what is failure,
what he likes more and what he likes less, what is his profit or his loss
derived from the action and what his costs are. In grasping all these things,
he may, of course, err in his judgments concerning the role various external
events and materials play in the structure of his action.

A definite mode of behavior is an action only if these distinctions are present
in the mind of the man concerned.

8. The Sciences of Human Action

The German language has developed a term that would have been expedient to
denote the totality of the sciences dealing with human action as
distinguished from the natural sciences, viz., the term
Geisteswissenschaften.
Unfortunately some authors have heavily loaded this term with metaphysical and
mystical implications that detract from its usefulness.

In English the term pneumatology (suggested by Bentham 2) as the
opposite of somatology) would have served the purpose, but it was
never accepted.

The term moral sciences as employed by John Stuart Mill is
unsatisfactory on account of its etymological affinity with the normative
discipline of ethics.

The term humanities is traditionally employed exclusively for the
historical branches of the sciences of human action.

Thus we are forced to employ the rather heavy term "sciences of human
action."